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  • 1974: due ragazze, una bianca figlia di un noto avvocato radicale e una nera religiosissima e intransingente, si ritrovano compagne di stanza nel prestigioso college di arti liberali di Schuyster. Il loro rapporto irrisolto - Genna, la narratrice, timida e appassionata, ha una forte spinta affettiva ... Continue

    1974: due ragazze, una bianca figlia di un noto avvocato radicale e una nera religiosissima e intransingente, si ritrovano compagne di stanza nel prestigioso college di arti liberali di Schuyster. Il loro rapporto irrisolto - Genna, la narratrice, timida e appassionata, ha una forte spinta affettiva verso Minette, la nera, che la rifiuta senza mezzi termini - si snoda sullo sfondo della persecuzione che Minette si trova a scontare, sulla ricostruzione del percorso umano di Genna stessa, sulle ferite dell'America post-Vietnam. Un libro mai politico ma profondamente legato all'intimo, al pulsare dei sentimenti, alla storia, alla carne - il lento disfacimento del corpo depresso di Minette diventa fulcro simbolico dell'intera narrazione.
    Straordinaria, come sempre in Oates, la caratterizzazione dei personaggi, che sfugge a ogni banalità.

    

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• ― Marta Barone said on Sep 17, 2008 | Add your feedback

Fifteen years ago, in 1975, Genna Hewett-Meade's college roommate died a mysterious, violent, terrible death. Minette Swift had been a fiercely individualistic scholarship student, an assertive—even prickly—personality, and one of the few black girls at an exclusive women's liberal arts college near Philadelphia. By contrast, Genna was a quiet, self-effacing teenager from a privileged upper-class home, self-consciously struggling to make amends for her own elite upbringing. When, partway through their freshman year, Minette suddenly fell victim to an increasing torrent of racist harassment and vicious slurs—from within the apparent safety of their tolerant, "enlightened" campus—Genna felt it her duty to protect her roommate at all costs.

Now, as Genna reconstructs the months, weeks, and hours leading up to Minette's tragic death, she is also forced to confront her own identity within the social framework of that time. Her father was a prominent civil defense lawyer whose radical politics—including defending anti-war terrorists wanted by the FBI—would deeply affect his daughter's outlook on life, and later challenge her deepest beliefs about social obligation in a morally gray world.

Black Girl / White Girl is a searing double portrait of "black" and "white," of race and civil rights in post-Vietnam America, captured by one of the most important literary voices of our time.